EXCERPT

He had never heard Lily sing, not consciously. He had never seen Lily dance. Had she ever really laughed in his presence?

They danced for over an hour, carried in the sea of sweaty bodies and injured toes. Theo bought ale and roasted nuts, and they sat on his cloak in the grass watching the chaos, then he pulled Lily back into the fray. When the musicians finally tired and the torches started to sputter out, he had to search in the darkness for his cloak while Lily giggled behind him. He finally found it, probably ruined by grass stains and people tramping on it. He flung it around his shoulders anyway. He took her hand in both of his.

“May I walk you home?” he asked earnestly, like a boy with his first love.

Her smile faded. She stared up at him, her face pale and her eyes wide in the light of the harvest moon.

END OF EXCERPT

What is Vain about? A tailor’s abandoned daughter fashions a vain nobleman’s tunic, finding passion between the neckline and hem as misfortune forces her into his precarious aristocratic world. Vain is book three in the Evolution Series, but stands alone as a story. In fact, I wasted two hours skimming back through Theo and Lily’s story, and decided it is my favorite.

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Unbidden

     

Second Love: A Short Historical Romance Story

    

Redeemed

     

Vain 

     

Little Witch: Historical Romance Novella

   

The Evolution Series Bundle

     

I had cotton-headed dreams of making my own cover but after a weekend of ineffectual stress I gave up and contacted Rae Monet so I can package my 49,000 words in something that doesn’t look like a photographic patchwork quilt. Hopefully in the next two weeks I can reveal my cover here.

But, who is Little Witch going to be about? If you’ve read the other books, you know that all the stories stand alone but tie together through a group of three Carolingian noblemen in the 800s. The most recent book, Vain, recounts Theo’s story. Little Witch will share the story of Nox, Theo’s stableboy. In Vain, we learned that Nox had been orphaned. He was eager to befriend Lily, a reluctant resident of Theo’s household.

We jump forward about 10 years in Little Witch to find Nox a trusted and beloved employee of the Lord and Lady Ribeauville. Because he lost his entire family in his youth, he keeps some distance between his heart and other people.

Our heroine, the little witch, is the younger sister of Nox’s childhood friend. Some cruel neighbors have labelled Salena as a sort of moon-charmer, making her an outcast from their entire community.

Salena was fun to write. I had decided I needed a heroine who actually had a family, so she has both her parents, an older brother, and a new sister-in-law in her household. I especially enjoyed creating the sibling relationship. Playing up the whole bossy older brother dynamic was fun! When she meets Nox, though, she longs for him to see her as she really is.  Not the annoying younger sister from their childhood games. Not a witch who played a role in the deaths of his family members.

With Lady Lily’s help, Nox does give Salena a chance….and the rest is in the novella, coming at the end of August!!

I am equally surprised that I enjoy writing these snippets that allow me to expand on characters who might not have an entire novel in them, but still have an interesting tale. Lately, I’ve been struggling to flesh out my characters for the story I am calling Little Witch, which will feature Nox (Theophilus’s stableboy) and a peasant woman named Salena, the younger sister of his childhood friend. They have taken their sweet time to gel for me, to let me see what makes them tick, to show me what each has to offer the other that makes it imperative for them to get together!

This week, they finally started to click, especially Nox. I’ve figured out that he is afraid of commitment. Maybe this shouldn’t be a surprise since he is a man, but in the romance genre, the hero is usually all-in once he finds the right woman. To remind you of his backstory from Vain, Nox lost his whole family when he was fourteen, and has seen other deaths since then, so he is unconsciously protecting himself from more pain. He still misses his family and does not want to risk another loss like that again.

I know that Nox is cute – see the screenshot I used to get a picture of him in my mind. He is capable. He is firmly part of life in Ribeauville now, and represents Theo’s interests out in the countryside. When that job brings him into Salena’s world again, what will happen?

What am I missing? What would you expect of Nox based on what you saw of him in Vain? How will he act with a woman who is both an attraction and a threat to his safe existence?

I don’t have any links to Second Love: A Short Historical Romance Story on the blog page yet, so here they are, in case you are interested in checking it out.

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Even though I enjoyed those books in their day and still revisit some of them, I do not particularly care for a slutty hero, first because he does not represent an ideal man to me, and second, I do not think a zebra can change his stripes that much.  Men who feel entitled to sex continue to feel entitled to it, marriage certificate or no.

Since I’ve started writing my own historical romances, I tend toward the opposite direction. In fact, my heroes’ sexual restraint is actually helpful to developing motivation and sometimes plot in all three books in my Evolution Series.

My hero in Unbidden is sexually experienced but with few partners and none involving long-term relationships. He finds the idea of regular sexual relations with the woman with whom he is falling in love a wonderful, increasingly frustrating enticement.

In Redeemed, I go out on a bit of a limb with a hero who is not only the villain in the first book but who has never had intercourse – not for lack of interest – but because of a physical disability that tripped him up the one time he tried during his adolescence.  His wife has to initiate him and luckily she is a widow who knows enough about the business to get them started down the road to discovering the pleasures of marriage together.

The hero in the third book in this series, Vain, to be released March 2013, is experienced but strictly avoids dallying with the women in his town and does not maintain a mistress.  He starts to realize that having a satisfying sexual relationship might be an important consideration to him in choosing a wife.

What do you think, readers? Is a virgin hero hot or odd? Do you demand a hero who is a walking Kama Sutra or do you like your fictional couples to discover a few moves together?

One of the really fun parts of being an indie author is cover design.  Since I write full-length novels, I do not get to have this fun very often.  I’ve done some covers myself but for my next release, Vain, I am having one designed by Rae Monet.  While choosing pictures and colors has been awesome (Rae had it almost perfect on the first draft) I have learned that I am pretty particular when it comes to fonts and maybe even more so with this book because my characters would notice a bad design choice.

Font is just as important in setting an reader’s expectation for setting and tone as pictures (or at least this is what I tell myself as I am poring over font websites).  On top of that, some fonts are just not very friendly to certain letters of the alphabet.

Take for example, the capital V.  I have learned, since my book is called Vain, that font designers do some crazy stuff to that letter. Look at the V to the left in a font called Brody. I’ve found that many “gothic” fonts make V look like D.

V in Bordeaux Roman Bold

Then there is the other end of the spectrum, the slender V to the right. It is lovely in its anorexic super model sort of way. Except that on a thumbnail-sized cover image it will look like a black slash or maybe an I.

Anyway, Rae Monet was very patient with my pickiness, finally turning me loose on a great site called dafont.  You select a font then type in your word to see what it will look like! And that is how I found a V that I think works for a story set in 839 France.  Tidy hand-lettering, doesn’t suggest witches or vampires, readable even on a postage stamp, a little curvy for romance.

Ta Da!

Vain in Augusta font

Coming in March!

Until then, I hope you’ll check out my other historical romances in this series, Unbidden and Redeemed, that are linked all over this blog and also available as a Romance Bundle.